Car Craze

Many of the vehicles sold today either meet or are cleaner than federal low-emission vehicle standards. Automakers have managed to cut pollution in part by simply continually improving their skills in designing emission control. Car pollution remains a challenge as automotive engineers find ways to achieve refinement of emission reduction technique while industry leaders invent new technologies to create cleaner gasoline-powered cars.

The mixture of air and gasoline that is rapidly burned inside an engine’s cylinder is where exhaust pollution originates. If fuel is perfectly burned, the only by-products would be water vapor and carbon dioxide. In reality however, combustion is never perfect thus harmful pollutants such as unburned hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide are created.

Automobile modifying is defined as the individual alteration of a factory model automobile to change its appearance or to improve its performance. Modifications that change appearance are referred to as customizing while modifications to improve performance and speed or speed alone is called hot rodding.

Car owners may choose to modify their cars to suit personal preferences that cannot be attained when purchasing one. It can be viewed as an expression of an owner’s individuality, a creative work of art or simply the desire to have a faster car with optimum engine performance. Next to a home, a car is something that can be personalized and made unique especially since cars have become an integral part of everyday life that it can be a representation of who we are.

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Achieving a “greener” car cannot be done through a single silver bullet but rather through the use of combination of key factors that will result to the desired product. The matter with regards to the role of materials and structures of vehicles towards the attainment of a greener vehicle is being recognized by latest developments.

Big strides in efficiency can be made by reducing vehicle mass with the use of lighter but high-strength steels, lightweight metals such as aluminum and magnesium and advanced plastics and composites. The aluminum-based structure of one car model for instance, cuts weight substantially when compared to standard stamped steel body while improving rigidity and crash worthiness.

The Rolls-Royce is a car brand that is over 100 years old which derived its name from the surnames of the two company founders – Henry Royce and Charles Rolls. They agreed to create a company sometime in 1904 and later went on to manufacture what is widely acknowledged as “the best car in the world”. The organization expanded through its diverse markets as it grew and extended its famous name and brand.

The company and the brand were subsequently split in 1971. The owner of the Rolls-Royce trademarks, Rolls-Royce plc, eventually sold the motorcar trademark to a BMW company, now known as the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd. This is the company that manufactures luxury automobiles and accessories in the name of Rolls-Royce from its headquarters in England. Rolls-Royce plc. retained its trademarks for use in markets other than motor industry.

Early modern legislation concerning the use of cars dealt with registration, driver licensing, lights for night driving and speed limits. As the number of cars increased and longer trips became common, a working system that would easily identify cars became necessary. Car owners were initially required to produce their own registration plates out of wood, leather or metal prior to the availability of manufactured license plates.

The licensing of drivers came much later than compulsory registration. The two white headlights and at least one red tail lights were required after electronic lights were developed. Laws that dealt with speed limits in the city and country were the most restrictive especially when most cars were able to go as fast as 25 miles an hour. The legal maximum speed limit increased very slowly before the coming of the superhighways.

Small foreign cars enjoyed increased sales in the US during the late 50s which led to the introduction of compact cars by the American Automobile Industry. A compact car was envisioned as a family automobile that is smaller in over-all size than a standard car with more or less the same interior body dimension. The engine is also usually smaller.

The honor of being the first car to be categorized as compact in the U.S. belongs to the Nash Rambler, which was the only car whose sales did not drop when small European cars became popular. Several other compact cars were introduced which cut into the sales of foreign cars. As the sales of compact cars declined sometime after, it is evident even today that compacts occupy an important place in the automobile market, in general.

The operation and riding qualities of the early gasoline automobiles improved and came quickly after 1900. Some of the features introduced included a four-cylinder, water-cooled and front-mounted engine; built-in baggage compartments and weather-tight tops and side curtains. Mass production was made possible with the introduction of standardized parts that facilitated cost reduction and quality improvement.

The electric self-starter replaced hand-crank that was needed to start the engine, at about the same time as electric headlights and all-steel closed bodies were coming out. Automobiles soon became a part of family and community life as more and more improvements such as the four-wheel hydraulic brake system, balloon tires, shatter-proof glass, mechanically operated windshield wipers, heaters and better carburetors were materializing.

The development of gasoline cars was not exempt from hindrances that affect its progress as an industry. This was evidently seen in the so-called “Selden Patent Fight” wherein one lawyer, George Selden, designed a gasoline engine similar to one he saw at the Philadelphia Exposition and obtained a broad patent that were taken to apply to all gasoline engines for automobiles. When Selden did not go into the automobile manufacturing business, his patent was taken over by an association of car makers which in turn, licensed other manufacturers to build automobiles under the patent with a payment of royalty.

Henry Ford refused to pay royalties on the automobiles he manufactured as he did not believe that the patent was valid. He was sued by the association but triumphed after winning the case when the US Circuit Court of Appeals recognized the validity of the Selden Patent only as applied to two-stroke engines. Ford and most other US automobile manufacturers were producing four-stroke engines.

In 1885, Gottlieb Daimler, invented a gasoline engine and manufactured his first car at Stuttgart in Germany. Karl Benz, another German inventor, produced his first car in Mannheim sometime in 1886. Daimler and Benz became successful automobile manufacturers and eventually merged to form the Daimler-Benz Organization.

The French company, Panhard and Levassor began making cars under Daimler’s patents. The year 1894 saw the introduction of a front-mounted engine under the hood instead of under the car seat, a clutch and gears and separate construction of the chassis and car body. The Duryea Brothers built the first successful gasoline automobile in the US which was a one-cylinder four-horsepower automobile which is currently housed at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Gasoline cars made by Elmer and Edgar Apperson, Charles King, Henry Ford and Ransom Eli Olds were introduced thereafter.

Early gasoline automobiles were modified buggies that had open bodies and an engine located under the floor of the back seat. Most had one or two-cylinder engines which needed to be cranked by hand to be started. Their weakest feature was the tires which were made of rubber-coated fabric.

Initial improvements came in the form of an invention of a one-cylinder engines that used illuminating gas for fuel which facilitated an automobile’s speed of 4 miles an hour. A carriage propelled by a two-cylinder gasoline engine soon followed but met so much public opposition, the project had to be abandoned. Several more attempts to make the gasoline automobiles usable and acceptable were done before major breakthroughs were attained that officially started the flourishing automobile industry.